beersgiving

10 November 2016

I always hated Thanksgiving dinner growing up. Dry turkey, even drier stuffing, runny mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie. Ick. And my birthday usually falls around Thanksgiving week so having my least favorite meal as a birthday meal did nothing to endear it to me. But then I married Husband. And we cook together. And, let me tell you, we can make a pretty mean turkey dinner. So much so that one year, we made a whole 20-lb turkey just for the two of us because we like to cook (and eat) it that much. And also because we’re weird. We make basically the same thing every year and it’s always just the staples but it’s always one of my top 10 meals that year: super juicy turkey, sweet potato souffle, cornbread and sausage stuffing, heaps of creamy mashed potatoes, bacon-wrapped green beans, etc. The only thing I have yet to master is gravy. Not sure why but I never can get it right. Better luck this year!

Over the years, I’m slowly sharing our recipes (kickin cranberry sauce | frozen pumpkin cheesecake) so here’s this year’s additions. We switched it up a little last year and had a beer tasting dinner (BEERSGIVING!) rather than a free-for-all face-stuffing-session and it was really fun. We had a flight of beers paired with each dish and sampled our way through first, then returned to eat until even my elastic pants were tight. Here are our recipes (roughly – I never can follow a recipe but these are the closest things I can find til I actually write ours down one of these years) along with our selections for pairings, in case you want to do the same. Each element should be a link to the proper recipe, if I have one. Hopefully.